But the greatest grievance is, a
paultry quack, that takes up my calling just under my nose, and
in his printed directions with N.B. says, He lives in the house
of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner
in leather, physick and astrology.
But to show how far the wicked spirit of envy, malice and
resentment can hurry some men, my nameless old persecutor had
provided me a monument at the stone-cutter's and would have
erected it in the parish-church; and this piece of notorious and
expensive villany had actually succeeded, had I not used my
utmost interest with the vestry, where it was carried at last but
by two voices, that I am still alive. That stratagem failing, out
comes a long sable elegy, bedeck'd with hour-glasses, mattocks,
sculls, spades, and skeletons, with an epitaph as confidently
written to abuse me, and my profession, as if I had been under
ground these twenty years.
And, after such barbarous treatment as this, can the world blame
me, when I ask, What is become of the freedom of an Englishman?
And where is the liberty and property that my old glorious friend
came over to assert? We have drove popery out of the nation, and
sent slavery to foreign climes. The arts only remain in bondage,
when a man of science and character shall be openly insulted in
the midst of the many useful services he is daily paying to the
publick.
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